Sailing with a ghost ship: Design guidelines for developing supervisory control interfaces for the semi-autonomous cargo vessel system

Rolls-Royce Marine is currently developing a semi-autonomous cargo vessel. The semi-autonomous cargo ship operation is a supervisory control task, in which the human operator is receiving information from a remote semi-autonomous vessel and instructing it through supervisory control interfaces. Thus, it is necessary to have supervisory control interfaces to carry the operation. But, the design guidelines for the interfaces are unclear, because of the lack of semi-autonomous cargo ships. The thesis presents design guidelines for developing supervisory control interfaces for the semi-autonomous cargo vessel. The research question answered in this thesis is: “How to design a supervisory control interface for remote semi-autonomous cargo vessel system to enable intuitive and precise instruction of the course plan?” The author answers the question through a research and design process that consists of the problem and solution spaces. The problem space suggests design requirements through a literature review and experts interviews. The literature review gives contextual and theoretical knowledge to design supervisory control interfaces. The expert interviews with video gamers and autonomous ship experts present potential user needs and design considerations. The findings from the problem space combine and formulate design requirements. The solution space ideates and prototypes a supervisory control interface prototype by applying the design requirements. The prototype has been evaluated in usability tests with sailors and autonomous ship expert. The findings from the usability tests are linked to the design requirements to evaluate how the designed solution fulfils design requirements. The thesis contributes to the design of semi-autonomous cargo vessel supervisory control interfaces by answering to the research question. In the conclusion part, the author answer to the research question by suggesting three design themes, which are synthetics of the design requirements and analysis. The design themes are: providing situation awareness, intuitive manipulation, and collaborative control. With these design themes designers will be able to develop supervisory control interfaces, which present intuitive and precise course planning capability to the operators. At the same time, the findings of the thesis will provide several directions for further research, such as researching an unmanned surface vehicle supervisory control interface

Qualitative Process Analysis : Theoretical Requirements and Practical Implementation in Naval Domain

Understanding complex behaviours is an essential component of everyday life, integrated into daily routines as well as specialised research. To handle the increasing amount of data available from (logistic) dynamic scenarios, analysis of the behaviour of agents in a given environment is becoming more automated and thus requires reliable new analytical methods. This thesis seeks to improve analysis of observed data in dynamic scenarios by developing a new model for transforming sparse behavioural observations into realistic explanations of agent behaviours, with the goal of testing that model in a real-world maritime navigation scenario

Ultrastructural analysis of odontocete cochlea

The morphological study of the Odontocete organ of Corti including possible pathological features resulting from sound over-exposure, represent a key conservation issue to assess the effects of acoustic pollution on marine ecosystems. Through the collaboration with stranding networks belonging to 26 countries, 150 ears from 13 species of Odontocetes were processed. In this dissertation, we present a standard protocol to 1) compare the ultrastructure of the cochlea in several Odontocete species and 2) investigate possible damage as a consequence of sound exposure, using scanning (SEM) and transmission (TEM) electron microscopy, and immunohistochemistry. In a preliminary study, computerized tomography scans were performed before decalcification with ears of 15 odontocete species, proposing a set of standard measurements which classified very well the species. In addition, the constant ratio between measurements of inner and middle ear structures contributed to confirm the active role of the odontocete middle ear in sound reception mechanism. We established a decalcification protocol using the fast commercial decalcifier RDO® and EDTA (Ethylendiaminetetraacetic acid). Although further experiments should be conducted to assess the suitability of using one or the other method (because the number of samples treated with EDTA was comparatively small), RDO® at specific dilutions decreased the decalcification time of cetacean ear bones with control of the decalcification endpoint, helping a faster access to inner structures. The complementary use of electron microscopy and immunofluorescence allowed the description in odontocetes of new morphological features of tectorial membrane, spiral limbus, spiral ligament, stria vascularis, hair cells and their innervation. Furthermore, this study revealed qualitative and quantitative morphological characteristics of the organ of Corti in high-frequency hearing species, including 1) an outer hair cell (OHC) small length, 2) a thick cuticular plate in OHC, and a thick reticular lamina, 3) robust cup formation of the Deiters cell body, 4) the high development of cytoskeleton in Deiters and pillar cells and 5) the basilar membrane high stiffness. Interestingly, all these features, including a common molecular design of prestin, are also shared by echolocating bats, suggesting a convergent evolution in echolocating species. The presence of scars among hair cell rows, the pattern of stereocilia imprints in the tectorial membrane and the condition of fibrocytes II and IV were criteria suitable to determine or discard possible acoustic trauma, despite the numerous artefacts that rapidly develop as a consequence of tissue autolysis. Consequently, matching the preliminary approximation of the cochlear frequency map with the damaged region would bring information on the sound source that would have triggered a possible lesion.Postprint (published version

A COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEM FOR AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLES

The work in this thesis is concerned with the development of a novel and practical collision avoidance system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Synergistically, advanced stochastic motion planning methods, dynamics quantisation approaches, multivariable tracking controller designs, sonar data processing and workspace representation, are combined to enhance significantly the survivability of modern AUVs. The recent proliferation of autonomous AUV deployments for various missions such as seafloor surveying, scientific data gathering and mine hunting has demanded a substantial increase in vehicle autonomy. One matching requirement of such missions is to allow all the AUV to navigate safely in a dynamic and unstructured environment. Therefore, it is vital that a robust and effective collision avoidance system should be forthcoming in order to preserve the structural integrity of the vehicle whilst simultaneously increasing its autonomy. This thesis not only provides a holistic framework but also an arsenal of computational techniques in the design of a collision avoidance system for AUVs. The design of an obstacle avoidance system is first addressed. The core paradigm is the application of the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm and the newly developed version for use as a motion planning tool. Later, this technique is merged with the Manoeuvre Automaton (MA) representation to address the inherent disadvantages of the RRT. A novel multi-node version which can also address time varying final state is suggested. Clearly, the reference trajectory generated by the aforementioned embedded planner must be tracked. Hence, the feasibility of employing the linear quadratic regulator (LQG) and the nonlinear kinematic based state-dependent Ricatti equation (SDRE) controller as trajectory trackers are explored. The obstacle detection module, which comprises of sonar processing and workspace representation submodules, is developed and tested on actual sonar data acquired in a sea-trial via a prototype forward looking sonar (AT500). The sonar processing techniques applied are fundamentally derived from the image processing perspective. Likewise, a novel occupancy grid using nonlinear function is proposed for the workspace representation of the AUV. Results are presented that demonstrate the ability of an AUV to navigate a complex environment. To the author's knowledge, it is the first time the above newly developed methodologies have been applied to an A UV collision avoidance system, and, therefore, it is considered that the work constitutes a contribution of knowledge in this area of work.J&S MARINE LT

Aerial Vehicles

This book contains 35 chapters written by experts in developing techniques for making aerial vehicles more intelligent, more reliable, more flexible in use, and safer in operation.It will also serve as an inspiration for further improvement of the design and application of aeral vehicles. The advanced techniques and research described here may also be applicable to other high-tech areas such as robotics, avionics, vetronics, and space